1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to providing communications between users over a network. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system for providing co-navigation of web documents with dynamic content.
2. Background Information
Today, people may jointly browse the same web site while being miles away from each other. For instance, a customer and a customer service representative located remotely from each other may jointly view online product demonstrations, fill out forms on the Internet, or walk through online transactions. However, existing co-browsing services that provide these joint online activities have some deficiencies. Typically, the available co-browsing systems fall short because they are based on “URL pushing,” a technology that allows users to “co-browse” a web page by allowing one user to send (i.e., f“push”) this web page to a browser of another user.
URL Pushing works well with static web content, but because of failures inherent in its architecture, URL pushing has trouble handling dynamic web content. In addition, URL pushing does not allow the participants of the co-browsing session to interact with each other in real time. For instance, the users may not simultaneously go from one web page to another by simply entering a new URL or clicking on a link in the web page. Instead, when one wishes to access a different web page, this participant must change the location of the other browser by “pushing” the new URL to the other participant. Similarly, the users cannot jointly complete a web form in real time. That is, when text is entered into a web form, this text is not displayed to the other participant until the first participant pushes the web page with the text to the other user. When submitting a web form using URL pushing technology, often the web site records duplicate transactions. For example, if a customer buys a computer during a URL pushing-based session with a customer service representative, two or more computer orders would be submitted to the company web site.
Another problem arises when a web page to be co-browsed has dynamic content, i.e., content that may change each time it is viewed depending on the user input or cookies. Dynamically generated web pages, which are used by most web sites, may be created using Perl, ASP, Cold Fusion, Servlets, WebObjects, Broadvision, etc . . . URL pushing technology does not support dynamically generated web pages, as those pages show different information for the same URL. Similarly, URL pushing does not support cookies that are used by many web sites to create customized web pages based on the user's past preferences and to keep track of the user's movements within the web site. Furthermore, the URL pushing technology fails to support personalized sections of a web site, i.e., sections requiring a user to enter the user name and password to log in. As a result, web pages with personalized content cannot be displayed on multiple browsers. Accordingly, companies cannot use existing co-browsing services based on URL pushing—unless they are willing to remove such functionality from their web sites. Thus, the currently available co-browsing systems do not provide sufficient functionality due to the limitations of the URL pushing technology.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to create an alternative co-browsing mechanism, which will provide synchronized, interactive co-navigation of dynamic web pages without imposing limitations on technologies used by companies in creating the web pages.